Gone Country

In a restaurant, I think one of the best indicators that a good meal is about to be served is when the bread they bring out before hand is fresh, handmade, and can't-stop-eating-it good. I'd tried my hand at baking bread before but I always ended up with crap: dry, bland, hard as a rock, and just not good.

But to complete my transition to a true country-living, land-loving Kept Man, I need to add some additional domestic tasks to my repertoire. Fresh baked bread every day? Maybe...

In the past few weeks, I've renewed the effort to make some good bread -- and we finally had some success. The first batch I made was 'country hearth bread' (or my interpretation of it) and was a mix of white bread flour and wheat bran with a touch of honey. I didn't quite have all the ingredients for the recipe I was loosely following but my improvisations seemed to work out.

We had this with cream of mushroom soup made from four different kinds of fungus from the store here, topped with some truffle oil we brought back from Rome. The bread was perfect with the soup and we had to fight over the leftovers.

Last week, I made some 'quick' ciabatta. It was good but I skipped about four hours of steps (I really don't have the patience for baking.) I'd show pictures of that one but it some how ended up looking like a, uh, male fertility symbol. Naughty bread, it was.